As Starmer comes to India, UK govt & Opposition unite to stake out anti-immigrant agenda

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is due to visit India in the coming days — his first official trip since Labour’s landslide victory earlier this year — aiming to reset relations with New Delhi and revive negotiations on a long-pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

The visit comes at a sensitive moment. While Starmer seeks to project a modern, pragmatic image abroad, his government at home has moved sharply towards tougher immigration controls, a shift that risks unsettling Britain's 1.8-million-strong Indian community and complicating talks where professional mobility and youth visas are key Indian demands.

At the same time, Britain's Opposition Conservative Party has unveiled a proposal for a £1.6-billion “Removals Force”, modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which conducts arrests and deportations of undocumented migrants in America.

The Conservative plan, launched at the party's Manchester conference, may be a campaign gambit. But, it underscores a deeper tension: Starmer's own turn towards stricter immigration rules and the political risk of alienating Britain's most successful minority.

In May 2025, his government published the white paper ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’, pledging tighter rules on family, study, work and settlement routes. At the launch, Starmer declared: “Every area of the immigration system — work, family, and study — will be tightened up … the time it takes to acquire settled status extended from five years to ten … and enforcement tougher than ever.”

He justified the shift as essential for national cohesion, warning that Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers” if migration remained unchecked, a phrase that drew sharp criticism and comparisons with Enoch Powell's rhetoric. Starmer later said he regretted using it.

Still, the combination of restrictive proposals and sharper tone has unsettled many South Asian Britons, who fear the boundary between mainstream and hard-right positions is blurring.

Indian community groups have long warned that Britain risks reviving its “hostile environment” under new guises. The Indian Workers' Association Great Britain(IWA-GB), one of the country's oldest diaspora organisations, says the latest Conservative plan confirms its long-held fears.

In a statement shared with The Tribune, Sital Singh Gill, General Secretary of the IWA-GB, said: “Unfortunately, the Conservative Party's proposal to introduce a US-style “Removals Force” confirms the fears we expressed more than a decade ago. These measures risk undermining trust within our communities, increasing racial tension, and targeting innocent people on the basis of appearance or background.”

He added that the association had previously warned in People's Democracy that similar immigration measures “threatened the immigrants’ freedom and liberty, would lead to deterioration in race relations, violate an individual's human rights, and would create a hostile environment for present and future immigrants.”

The Conservative proposal for a militarised deportation unit lands awkwardly just as London and New Delhi are finalising an FTA, in which professional mobility and youth visas are among India's red-line issues.

A South Asian analyst at a leading London think tank, speaking anonymously, noted: “If the Tories campaign on mass deportations while Labour echoes similar rhetoric, it plays badly in Delhi and undermines trust.”

Britain remains a favoured study destination for Indians, issuing more than 140,000 student visas last year. Yet, immigration lawyers report that enforcement visits have already grown more aggressive in boroughs with South Asian populations.

An immigration solicitor specialising in Indian diaspora cases said: "A policy framed for 'illegals' can easily sweep up people with pending appeals or minor paperwork gaps, situations common among newcomers from India."

The Indian diaspora, long courted by both major parties, could become a crucial swing bloc. Under former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the party enjoyed strong support from business families who saw a fellow traveller at No. 10. His departure, followed by renewed hard-line rhetoric, has left many feeling "used and discarded".

Labour, by contrast, has sought to repair strained ties, shelving its divisive conference motions on Kashmir and highlighting trade and education partnerships with India. Starmer and former Foreign Secretary David Lammy have met Indian industrialists and temple leaders, stressing "a shared democratic future".

For many British Indians, the difference now lies in tone. "Control" voiced in bureaucratic terms feels tolerable; "removal" voiced in militarised language does not.

As Starmer heads to India, his government's challenge will be to convince both Delhi and the diaspora that Britain's new immigration strictness does not come at the expense of partnership, mobility, or mutual respect.

Harsh policies may win headlines. But every turn toward hostility risks eroding what has long been one of Britain's quietest strengths, namely its ability to make immigrants feel they belong.